Is planned obsolescence "progress" when we can't find enough landfills for our junk?

Disposing with the fix-it guys
San Francisco Chronicle, July 10. 2005

"Remember the old ad about the lonely washing machine technician? Well, he's no longer lonely -- he's dying away.

In this disposable age, the neighborhood appliance technician is disappearing.
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Not only have consumers grown accustomed to throwaway culture, but appliance companies count on it.

"In 1920,'' Hanika says, "a (top of the line) iron cost $9.95. That was expensive for then, but it was built to last 20 years. Today, you can also buy an iron for $9.95. The difference is, today it is junk.''


And so it is with progress.

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Is planned obsolescence socially responsible?
Sharon Beder

In an editorial in Design News toward the end of the fifties, E. S. Safford asked whether engineers should resist the philosophy of planned obsolescence if their management commissioned a 'short-term product' and argued that they should not: "Planned existence spans of product may well become one of the greatest economic boosts to the American economy since the origination of time payments." What was required, he argued was "a new look at old engineering ethics". Instead of trying to build the best, the lightest, the fastest and the cheapest, engineers should be able to apply their skills to building shoddy articles that would fall apart after a short amount of time, all in the interests of the market.

The editorial prompted a wide response. Several engineers wrote in to add their agreement. According to Packard, "the majority of engineers and executives reacting to the editorial, however, seemed angry and bewildered. They appeared to have little enthusiasm for the 'new ethics' they were being invited to explore." They objected because planned obsolescence gave engineering a bad name, because it cheated customers who were not informed of the death-date of the product, and because it directed creative engineering energies toward short-term market ends rather than more lofty and ambitious engineering goals.

Today when protecting the environment is such a priority goal, the question of product life and durability is again a critical question.

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